T-Mobile is at it again. The disruptive wireless carrier is boosting its "network prioritization point," a fancy term that simply means users will have access to more high-speed data before throttling kicks in.
Starting Wednesday, T-Mobile customers will be able to use at least 50GB of high-speed data before prioritization is implemented. Up to this point, the limit was set at 32GB - still a decent amount and far more than AT&T and Verizon offer at 22GB. Sprint's high-speed cap is set at 23GB.
T-Mobile is quick to highlight that a customer will only notice prioritization when two things happen: they've exceeded 50GB of data in a single month and they are in an area of the network that is actively experiencing congestion.
The wireless industry has drastically changed its marketing strategy over the years to adapt to consumer trends.
One doesn't have to think back all that far to remember a time when wireless plans were sold based on the number of talk minutes they offered. When SMS was in vogue, the carriers capitalized with some charging on a per-message basis although Apple decimated SMS with its iMessage service (BlackBerry also helped with its Messenger platform). Heck, mobile data was so underutilized at one point that it was often offered as a free or cheap plan add-on.
Any bets on how long it'll be before AT&T, Sprint and Verizon follow suit and increase their prioritization limits? This is a "monkey see, monkey do" industry, after all.